This invention relates generally to the field of measuring instruments and is particularly directed to a method and apparatus for determining the speed, distance traversed, running elapsed time and calories expended by a person while running.
In recent years, concern over the increasing numbers of cardiovascular illnesses reported each year has led to much greater public awareness of the importance of maintaining good physical body conditioning. This concern has spawned the development of a wide variety of health spas, fitness centers and other similar commercial establishments. While many of these facilities offer excellent fitness programs, a large number of individuals are foreclosed from participation because they do not have the time, financial resources or a convenient schedule to devote to a professionally supervised fitness program. Many individuals have, therefore, turned to their own fitness program of regular jogging. As used herein, jogging is also intended to include running and the two words are used interchangably.
Jogging has long been recognized for its therapeutic effects on the body. It increases cardiopulmonary fitness, helps to lower blood pressure, decreases cholesterol and triglyercides associated with heart disease and reduces weight. Jogging is also one of the easiest exercises to do. It requires no athletic ability and can be done almost any time and any place with a minimum of equipment and without assistance. In more recent times, jogging has also gained acceptance for its recreational value as well and is recognized as a positive factor in establishing psychological stability. The popularity of jogging today is well documented by the large numbers of products and literature available to the running public.
As in many exercise and sporting endeavors, there exists in the prior art a wide variety of devices for aiding those who jog. The simplest running aids are basic pacing timers as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,540,344 to Veech and U.S. Pat. No. 3,882,480 to Greber. Pacing timers generate a repetitive audio tone signal at selected intervals for pacing the strides of the runner. The length of the interval between tones is adjusted to suit the pace of the individual jogger.
There are other running aids known in the prior art such as pedometers as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,053,755 to Sherrill. These devices usually count the number of steps taken and for a particular stride length, the approximate distance traversed can be determined.
While pacing timers and pedometers are useful to the jogger, they are deficient in several areas. For example, it is known that above a certain speed, stride length begins to increase as speed increases. The relationship of stride length to speed is not directly proportional and is different for each jogger. It is, therefore, a difficult task to determine the correct stride length for an individual jogger at various speeds. Thus, pacing timers can provide no more than a constant running pace and pedometers are only useful as an approximation of distance traversed.
Running aids known in the prior art are further deficient in that they add weight to the runner while providing only marginal utility in terms of the amount of information available and its accuracy. Further, it has become desirable to accurately measure the speed of amateur and professional runners, both in training and during competition. In the prior art, such measurements were made with a stop watch timing the runner over a known distance. Heretofore, it has not been possible to obtain accurate instantaneous speeds of runners using the measuring devices currently known in the prior art.
With the foregoing in mind, the ideal running aid should, therefore:
1. be light in weight; PA1 2. serve a number of useful functions; PA1 3. be inexpensive; PA1 4. provide measurements that are readily available to the user; PA1 5. be reliable and easy to use; and PA1 6. provide accurate measurements of speed, distance traversed, running time elapsed calories expended and other useful information.